Clark's foul trouble hurts UAlbany in loss at Yale

Point guard plays only 24 minutes as Danes fall to 3-7

College basketball doesn't readily make available a plus/minus statistic, introduced decades ago by the NHL and adopted recently by the NBA.

You didn't necessarily need a number Tuesday night to measure the impact of junior point guard Ahmad Clark on the University at Albany squad.

Clark's court time in a nonconference matchup against Yale was restricted because of foul trouble, and the Great Danes didn't function nearly as efficiently without him in their 71-63 loss to the Bulldogs at John J. Lee Amphitheater.

"Our offense had a nice flow to it when Ahmad was in the game," UAlbany coach Will Brown said. "He just wasn't in the game at crucial times."

The plus/minus stat computes how a team performs when a particular player is on the court. Clark was a plus-6 — the Danes outscored Yale 40-34 when he was in the game.

Clark played just 24 minutes, picking up two fouls in the first 4:10 after UAlbany (3-7) had opened up a 7-1 lead.

Yale (5-3) parlayed a 13-0 run into a 32-22 halftime lead. Clark triggered a 9-1 UAlbany start to the second half, but his fourth foul came with 13:12 remaining, after he committed a turnover, then tried to block Trey Phills' breakaway layup.

"I told him, you have to let him score that basket," Brown said. "I can't have him on the bench with 14 minutes to go with four fouls. The initial reaction for a player in that situation is, 'Not only am I not going to foul, I'm not going to play any defense.'

"Ahmad needs to get a free pass once in a while because this is the first year he's played. At this level he hasn't been in too many of these stuations, and that's when we need him to be smarter. It's a good learning experience."

Yale, playing without leading scorer Miye Oni (illness), eventually got untracked. The Bulldogs led by 16 with 1:38 to play before the Danes cut the deficit in half against the Bulldogs' reserves.

"Sometimes you play to the point you do the least amount of work necessary," Yale coach James Jones said. "We did that early in the game and also the second half. You look at the scoreboard and see what's going on, and now you've got to push it into another gear. Our guys were able to do that."

UAlbany had spurts of offensive production but not consistency. Cameron Healy had 15 points, Adam Lulka and Devonte Campbell scored 11 each, and Clark put in 10 — although it was half of his season average.

"We had a few too many lapses defensively, especially in transition, and they capitalized on that," said Lulka, who also had a team-high eight rebounds. "We were getting easy shots early on, and as the half went on, we started taking harder shots for some reason. We weren't getting back on defense, weren't executing plays properly."

"We're getting limited production from our bench," Brown said. "I told these guys there's minutes available, and you're not going to be given minutes. You've got to be productive with the minutes that you get. That's putting too much pressure on the guys that are playing heavy minutes right now."

Despite the absence of Oni, Yale outscored UAlbany 28-16 in bench points. Danes guard Antonio Rizzuto, playing only his second collegiate game, buried three 3-pointers, although two came in garbage time at the end.

Brown said Rizzuto will be in the starting lineup "as soon as he gets his legs to a point where they're not sore and that his cardio is good. He'll probably move into the starting lineup once that happens. That takes a scoring option away from our bench."